


I Can't Wait For Everything to End

by NothingEnough



Series: 47 crosses (left 4 dead 2) [3]
Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Angst, Blood and Gore, Break the Haughty, Canon-Typical Violence, Gameplay and Storyline Integration, Gen, Medical Trauma, Scars, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Vomiting, a lot of fucking swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:43:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5271860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He opens his eyes... (set during "Hard Rain", implied Ellis/trans!Nick)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Wait For Everything to End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bionic (Vexza)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexza/gifts).



> Gifted to Bionic and everyone else who has supported this endeavor.

He opens his eyes. Sees blue and brown and white, and then the fucking agony hits and he forgets his own name.

He makes this miserable squawk that barely rates above a conversational tone. The blurred colors retreat to the redblack under his eyelids. The pain thunders through him like a beater on its last overheating engine, grinding and roaring, and he's a jagged chunk of rock caught in the back tire. Can't even tell where the fuck the hurt starts. Only knows he breathes 'cause his whole goddamn body wails with the rise and fall of his chest.

Okay. Breathe. Okay. 

He's seen worse. He tries to remember when. The time he got glassed in a brawl outside that mobbed-up bar in Vegas. No. First time he got period cramps. Nope. No. The time he got that staph flare-up. He zeroes in on this long agonizing stretch of memory. The blood. The clots of pus building up to softball- and baseball-sized lumps under his newly sculpted chest. The heat, the fucking heat. And then his body tried to kill all the infection by killing itself with septic shock. The hallucinations. The helplessness. The pain. The endless days when he started feeling like he was born in this hospital room and everything beforehand was a drug-induced dream.

Yeah. He has seen worse. This shit is a cakewalk. He's got this.

He opens his eyes.

The colors blur, magnify, turn into the kind of shit Nick now expects to see when he wakes. Blue wallpaper. White baseboards. Brown bloodstains in a senseless almost-pattern smeared over the lower part of the wall, dripped on the floor. He blinks. Looks up. A long line of multi-colored 0s. He blinks again and they become the bottom of a row of shirts and jackets.

Closet. Can't move. Rain throbs on the roof like every goddamn cloud in the South is pissing on this house all at once. 

Gotta move. Can't. He hears the rain and nothing else.

No Infected. That's good. No friendly fire or voices. That's so bad his skin tries to crawl away from the thought of it. Don't think of it. He takes stock of his body instead. He starts at the bottom. Left big toe twists hard against the side of his shoe. Scrapes all over his calves. Left kneecap gels loose and hot in the socket. Burning rough line across his stomach. Left arm pinned under him, and either it fell asleep or the nerves are dead. He can only feel its twisted shape coiled like a snake beneath his side, with the fangs sinking into his chest. Left shoulderblade feels like it's cracked down the middle. Head feels like it's full of bees all committing mass suicide by pumping his brain full of venom. 

He runs his tongue out of his mouth, feels a dry scuff of skin, the wet of blood, taste of pennies.

So. He fell. Can't remember falling, but that's all he's got to explain the left side of his body's utter brokenness. He fell and the others... dragged him here... and left him.

And here he just started to trust those stupid bastards.

Fuck 'em. This always happens. His dad banged out when he was four; Estelle (he still doesn't call her "ma", even in his wounded thoughts) threw him outta the house when she found out his "new boyfriend" was actually a lipstick named LaRenee. Caron backed out on him three days after the hospital declared him decolonized of staph. Billy went and fucking died on him and his wife Wilma wanted to grieve alone, didn't think Nick deserved to be there since he wasn't blood, just a stepdaughter pretending to be a stepson, and Wilma told him to vamoose. And all the one-nights and week-long affairs always ended, sometimes with yelling and sometimes with busted appliances and sometimes with a quiet _just get out_. 

And now these three jokers wanna ditch him? Fuck 'em. He doesn't need 'em. He'll get through on his own just like always or he'll die trying, and who fucking needs Coach or Rochelle or, or Ellis? Not him. No sir. Fuck 'em all.

Nick takes maybe five minutes to sit up. He feels like that bug-eyed motherfucker at the end of Fargo, after his unfortunate date with a woodchipper, but he sits up. He closes his eyes against the rising tide of nausea, his hands flat on the thin wet carpet bracketing his legs. Fuck no he's not puking here or he'll never goddamn quit. The agony tells him he really wants to eject his stomach against the wall. He tells the pain to sit and spin.

Fine. He's alone and he has to find someplace safer than a closet somewhere in Buttfucking, Louisiana. He'll hurt later. Once he's safe.

Nick touches the holster hooked to the inside of his belt. He sticks his tacky fingers inside. He stares at the slats of the closet door like he's waiting for Dennis Hopper to leave. His right hand slowly crosses over to his left hip, tries the other holster just to be sure. Air. His holsters got air and nothing fucking else in 'em. Shit. When the hell was the last time he didn't have his pistols? Feels like he was born with the damn things on his hips at this point, and now he really goddamn needs 'em, and now they're fucking gone.

His eyes roll like sandpapered marbles back and forth, seeking anything he can use. Nope. Nothing in here more dangerous than the dirty shoes piled in the nearby corner. Super.

Whatever. He can't stay here. A siren goes off in his fried brain, he hears creaks in the floorboards downcellar, and he thinks Infected. If they catch him here, he's a dead man. He presses a hand to the closet door. It drifts open.

The room is all pitchy. Teenage boy's bedroom, from the usual requirements of the Gender Cult--everything's navy and black. Poster of the Hubble near the nightstand. Computer on a desk with the monitor smashed to spiderwebs. Curtains drawn. Window open to the thundering rain. Bed made with a single solid sheet of blood. Chunks of meat scattered like dirty socks all over the floor. 

Empty other than him. Good.

Nick crawls outta the closet (third time's the charm, he thinks with something like a grin). He accidentally leans his weight on his left kneecap and almost passes out in a string of mental fireworks. Fuck that. He's got no time for pain, or for fainting, or anything other than clapping eyes to a spraypaint outline of a house with a cross in the center. 

He bites his lip. Sucks at the blood. Focuses on the taste of blood like copper. Breathes. Shoves himself to his knees. Leans a hand on the nearest wall. Pushes himself 'til he's standing at a fortyish-degree angle. Slides with his good shoulder against the wall. Trusts his feet to handle his body when he reaches the door. 

Why the fuck did he ever trust anything else?

Stumble into the hall. More dark. Bunch of doors. Most standing open. No noise but the rain. Door closing off the end of the hallway. He glances in each room as he passes. No guns anywhere. He can't risk the closeness of a melee fight and he's in the one house in the goddamn Gun Belt with no fucking guns. Great. Fan-fucking-tastic.

The handle slides in his sweaty hand. Try again. He gets it open.

A little hall ending in a huge fucking mound of stairs and Nick's stomach lurches like it wants to crawl outta the gouge across his midsection. No. No. No vertigo. Jesus, it's just some fucking stairs. 

He sits on the top step, regains his breath. Takes them one at a time, sliding down on his ass, groaning with every bump, what the hell else can he do? Sit still and politely wait to get kicked to death? Not a fucking chance. Not while he's still breathing.

He counts each jolt as it racks him. He gets to fifteen and he pauses, almost panting. This Christing staircase is stupid long. He thinks about Coach struggling up the hotel stairs, of cracking wise about the helicopter being made of chocolate. Nick tries to remember how it felt to have legs that moved without agony, to taste air that didn't knife him on the way in. Tries to remember and fails.

And his eyes roll to the side and he sees the big bay windows downstairs split like a fish on a dock, the rain pours in like guts and oh fuck oh fuck he knows.

He didn't fall. He wasn't left behind. 

He was--he and the others were running around the upper porch of some fucking plantation house, him and Coach in front because Coach had got a mother of a beating from a Hunter and they just needed a goddamn minute. Ellis called all-clear and Nick went to work with the medkit. The fucking second Nick finished laying medical tape over the cotton patch adorning Coach's chest, somebody (Ro?) screamed _look out!_ and Coach fell back and Nick didn't. He went for his worthless skillet and then came the bellow right in his ear, the window nearby exploded into daggers and God, finally sick of His backward creation, slapped Nick cross-eyed with a megaton hand. 

He flew. He remembers soaring through the rain. Seeing the sky all thick gray clouds. Hearing screaming faraway and the snorftling chortle of the Charger right before it fucking pummeled him midair. He remembers looking down and seeing endless fields of sugarcane and hearing a world -ending crunch, and.

And that's it.

Can't be, goddamn it. No way they found his broke ass and dragged him into this shithole and just left him to die. No way they found him. How the hell did he get here?

Nick stares at the window. A bolt of lightning turns the panes into a giant white square blotted with inkstain silhouettes. His heart stops.

He makes it up three stairs when the window breaks into a door, and he almost gets the hallway door shut before they're on him, and their nails are ragged.

***

He opens his eyes. 

Flames and metal. The sugar mill. He'll be a long time in hell before he forgets this fucking place. The alcove not far from the slowest elevator in the universe. He tries to sit up. His whole body commands him to fuck off and leave it alone.

Jesus, he's fucked up. Feels like every Infected in Louisiana did a goddamn line dance on him. Taste of pennies in his mouth. He spits a thick clot of blood and snot on the concrete. White fragments against black, red and green. Hope he doesn't need that tooth later.

Okay. He blinks. Tries his holster. Empty. He blinks again. He knew it was empty, just had to check... probably the weight difference. That's how he knew.

He listens. Fire burning in spite of the rain. Nothing else yet. The elevator might take him to a safe room, but it might also call the horde. Stairs. Can he even walk down the stairs?

He shakily rises, decides that, yes, he can. He has to. No friendlies in earshot. No one to save him.

Nick lurches down the first flight of stairs, nearly falls down the last four steps. He stands on the landing, legs shaking, biting his dry lip, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo. This sensation of falling fucks him wicked hard, brings up a memory (?) of being supported by nothing but wind and rain. The hell? Some fucking dreams he's had while he was knocked out. Probably because the others fucking left him here to die. Falling as a stand-in for abandonment, full Freudian. 

Ah, to hell with it. 

He moves on, picks up speed. He'll make it through. Then he'll find a safe room. He'll sleep and recharge and get his weapons and his shit together. Then he'll find them and they'll fucking pay for leaving him behind. Oh yes. He'll get him a sniper rifle and build a nice little nest on some rooftop and he'll wait for them to make a run for Virgil's boat. Three trigger-pulls--maybe four, his imagination focuses on missing Rochelle the first time and he indulges it--and then he'll just have to grab their gas-cans since his is fucking gone the same as his pistols. And if Virgil figures out what he did, well, fuck him too. Nick can operate a boat. He'll cruise into New Orleans alone. Just like always.

The revenge fantasy dissolves as he hits the last few stairs, the fields up ahead. What the hell for? Didn't they leave him to die and strip him of every goddamn weapon and protectant he had for good measure? All the evidence from where and how he woke up says yes. A tiny core part of his idiot brain says no. Keeps repeating clips of that fuck-awful dream, falling and screaming and three voices all miserably calling his name distantly under the din of the rain. How... no, fuck it. He'll get through the next five minutes and find a safe house and then he'll worry about his sanity and his future, Nick has--

He bangs a right, his vision reports a thick shadow, his nose reports the stench of a barf factory. He reels back too late. The Boomer makes that awful grinding vomit sound and he's suddenly soaked in hot green shit and the smell is amazing, apocalyptic, a hospital's worth of sick and death and pus and nasty all over him.

"Damn it, I'm hit!" he says uselessly, forgetting his loneliness in his disgust. He blindly stumbles over his own feet, hits the ground, crabwalks back 'til his back hits a wall, chokes. He hears them now over the wet wrath of God. Their gibbering at a nearby target. He can just barely see them scampering closer through the haze of puke making his eyes water.

Then comes the heels.

***

He opens his eyes.

Nick fights a sharp, rising sense of wrongness. Like his brain rejects the very idea that it should be able to operate his nerves. He ignores it. He used to feel that way all the goddamn time, never had a name for it, not 'til he wised up to his gender. Nothing new. He can handle this.

He gives his surroundings a look-see. All dark. He's sitting half-in something made outta hard plastic, water soaks up through his pants. He grunts and tries to stand. His stomach throbs. His foot kicks something flat in front of him and the sound of shoe leather on metal reverbs in his ears. Smell of bleach. His hands grope for something solid, one finds the flat of a wall, the other the smoothness of a thin rounded wooden stick. 

Okay. Cleaning closet. Cleaning closet and he's alone, nothing outside but the rain. Fucking rain. The sound makes his skin thrive with invisible ants.

Where the hell is everybody?

He picks himself up. Feels like a whole fleet of trucks ran him over. His jaw aches like it lost a few important pieces of bone, maybe a tooth to boot. Couple of broken toes. Maybe one or two lumps on his skull. 

How the fuck did he get here?

Nick keeps his head above the tidal wave of unreality. He finally stands, the mop bucket he woke up in rolls back and hits the far wall. Wet soaks through the stitching on his shoes. Fucking eight hundred dollar soft leather dress-shoes (he lifted 'em from a cobbler's on River Street a day after the Infected came across the Savannah Bridge--because, well, fuck, how often did he ever find shoes that actually fit him?) and they're fucking useless against the rain boiling up under the door.

He checks his holsters. Empty. He knew they'd be empty. 

He reaches for the door. Finds a switch on the wall instead. Fuck it. Might as well. He flicks it on.

The door is decorated. The Sharpie writing is smeared with a footprint, but still there. 

WHY DON'T YOU JUST FUCKING DIE??

Under that, four jagged lines.

That's his handwriting. 

Nick stares. And stares. That's him. He wrote that. When the fuck did he write that? He can't remember. He tries. He can't remember much right now. He knows that's his handwriting, and his name, and his age, and the apocalypse. He knows there were others with him, he can almost see their faces, pieces of brown eyes and a purple shirt and jeans (no, coveralls) and... nothing. 

Maybe he made them up. He's cracking under the stress of fighting across the goddamn South on his own.

Yeah.

He touches his pockets. Feels the shape of something thin, knows before he draws it out that it's a black marker. He rolls the marker between his fingers. He thinks those lines aren't just lines.

He draws a line across the four. Five tally marks. Five times. Five what?

He shrugs. Pockets the marker. Fine. He opens the door into the endless night.

He walks down a hall, ignores the deja-vu, opens doors at random, or maybe it's not--he unerringly finds the way out like this place is his childhood home. Can't be. He never went anywhere in Louisiana but Shreveport, good casinos there, lotta Texans to rip off. 

Out into the warm rain and he knows before he sees it that he will walk into a massive field of sugarcane. They don't tell you that sugarcane leaves cut. He pushes mindless through the insane dark and water and plantlife, the thin earth roiling with roots and puddles. He pushes and listens and hears nothing but his own phlegmy breathing.

Lost in the tall dark, he is struck by a sharp cough. He indulges it for a minute and the minute multiplies; his body twists in on itself, his awareness narrows to the spasms of his diaphragm and his lungs fighting the goddamn air. He coughs 'til his stomach finally gives up the ghost of his last meal, he falls to his hands and knees and out comes the hot mostly-liquid vomit and oh fuck he hates puking it sprays outta his nose and that makes him puke harder 'til there's nothing but burn from his midsection to his mouth and nostrils. Burn and a taste of pennies.

He swirls his tongue in his mouth. All his teeth are where they oughta be. 

But he lost one. He knows he lost one, remembers it. Somehow.

Is he turning?

He kneels shuddering, trying to kill that thought but it won't die. Some people turn in a few seconds. But not all. The girl he was fucking in Savannah, the one he was with when the Infected hit, she took seven hours to turn. 'til he was sleeping, like the clueless fuck he was. Almost killed him. Maybe for some it takes days. Maybe this is what it's like.

His fingers dig into the weak mud. Now that it's too late, he remembers. He is dying. Dying over and over. Only to come back. Each time a little weaker. The past wounds healing on their own, just enough to keep him alive just long enough to die again. 

Soon he'll wake up and it won't be him. 

His filthy hands touch his throat. No swelling. Oh Jesus let there be no swelling. Any fucking thing but a Boomer. There's something so repulsive in how they pop in a hail of blood and vomit and he hates throwing up and he hates the thought of his body turning into a puke machine, please not a Boomer.

Nick lies loose-boned on the ground like the rain physically crushes him, and he cries. His own voice sounds ugly and awkward to his ears. He hasn't cried like this since he lost his virginity, the burning sting and the horrifying sensation of something thick and hard ramming over and over and stretching him in ways he hadn't even imagined he should stretch, asking his boyfriend to stop and _hang on baby it'll feel good_ and whatta fucking lie that was, then it was over and he laid there and cried helplessly for ten minutes straight, hands over his face, shoulders quaking, voice a high-pitched misery, and this fucking guy rolled over to comfort him and ended up grabbing at his tits and Nick cried even harder and ended up walking home with tears and snot and makeup all over his face and he said he'd never fucking weep like this again and here he goddamned is. He makes this rough cawing sound like a baby abandoned by its dead parents, hot tears mixing into cold mud, shaking and fighting the terrific but incredibly stupid urge to scream for help, for comfort, for fucking anybody.

It takes him too long to realize he's not the only one sobbing in the cane field.

Weeping to his twelve, and his six, and his seven. An identical chorus. The mud filthies his suit and clogs up his nose as he presses himself small on the ground.

Then he thinks... fuck it.

Get it over with.

Nick stands up. The rain pounds him, washes his face clean before he straightens his back. He spits. Scrapes the mud off the front of his suit. That shit cost three thousand dollars and he might be wearing it for a fucking long time.

"Where are ya, ya goddamn skeaze?" he screams, and gives his fate up to claws.

***

He doesn't open his eyes.

He's so tired. He doesn't know where he is. Doesn't care. Doesn't matter. He just wants to go to sleep. The thunder sends his adrenaline through the roof. Won't let him rest. Goddamn this fucking weather.

He tries to sit up but the weight on his back throws him unsteady.

Nick presses his bare hands to the floor. Floor. Not ground. Cold tile. He leans forward and his head strikes something. He utters an unconscious "fuck" and draws back. Touches what he hit. Textured plastic. He recognizes it from decades of rest stops and gas station. A stall. He breathes deep and the faded perfume of ancient piss-stains confirms it. Public bathroom.

The germophobe in him, borne of that near-fatal brush with staph, recoils in panic. He reels to his feet and the thing on his back creates this thin gurgling sound. He touches the strap on his shoulder.

The gas can.

Why a gas can? Did he... He almost remembers. He kinda sees a graffiti'ed wall with the huge warning RATION THE GAS and IF YOU TAKE MORE THAN ONE CAN, YOU WILL BE SHOT and WHY DON'T YOU JUST FUCKING DIE??

Or was that another wall? Where did all the mud go? He brushes a hand over his lapel. Drying. Gritty. Stained a little. Not bad. Not as bad as it should be. Right?

Tired. So damn tired. Doesn't know if he's fucking coming or going.

His hand slides lower over his abdomen and encounters tacky liquid. He stares dumbly down at his body. Blood. Shirt ripped to shit. Blood. Blood and shredded flesh and is that a peek of intestine?

He can't feel it. He tilts his head. Touches his guts. Nothing. Pushes the curve of intestine back in. Nothing. Just cold and tired and he musta bled the very last of his fucks, 'cuz he's all out.

Hand over his wound, he almost face-plants into the stall's door. Undoes the latch. Limps outta the bathroom.

The burger joint. He thinks _one-man cheeseburger apocalypse_ and has no goddamn idea what it means. Windows all shot to shit. Rain pouring in. No signs of life. He doesn't look around, just holds his guts in place and wanders out the door. 

Houses and rain and the very pervasive assurance that this isn't real. He's not Infected. He's dead or dying. Either he is wrong and the human spirit persists after death, and God is punishing him for his apatheism, or he's dying like that fucker on Owl Creek Bridge, his brain treating him to one last fever dream. Doesn't fucking matter either way. If he's dying, he'll do his best to find a familiar face; he likes the idea of, right before the light of brain-death overwhelms him, getting a glimpse of Coach or Rochelle or Ellis one last time. He keeps forgetting them, but not right now, right now he feels this desperate empty yearn for them. Aching to not feel so fucking alone. 

And if he is dead, he's gotta keep going so's he can find God and fucking take that Maryfucker apart with his bare hands. Because this is no fucking way to treat your own goddamn creation.

He makes his hunched body walk on. Holds his guts in. Still not feeling much, other than cold and the wet. He doesn't know if it's shock or the onset of death. Walk up the street slick with oil and water, and will he really have to go all the hell past that mill before he finds anybody he knows? Will they remember him? Let him in? Mistake him for Infected?

He looks up into the boiling rain, something blacker than night twists around his peripheral, he flinches too late (always too late), a disgusting muscled rope lassoes him like a colt in a Western and his feet fly out from under and the world spins outta control.

The gas can on his back slams against the outside of some fucking house and he feels so damn vulnerable this way, it's like a spotlight shines on him to show all the Infected where the munchies are. He struggles and chokes and screams for help that will never come. He hears them coming, the laughter, the yelping, the pounding of bloody feet on pavement, the Smoker's tongue tightens up and the tip jams into the ragged hole in his stomach and everything from his DNA to his conscious mind revolts.

No. He ain't getting tongue-fucked in a fucking wound by a fucking Smoker. Even a man like him has limits and this is it. 

Nick makes this rough screamy kinda sound, body flipping around, feet kicking at the wet mud, arms twisting and squirming under the too-strong weight of Smoker tongue. Head whips back and strikes the siding. Rollicks forward and the rot-stinking dry zombie flesh caresses his face, wraps around his cheek and across his mouth. He shuts his eyes. 

He thinks of Estelle buying the cheap-ass cuts at the market, since she hadda feed four kids. Most of that shit he still likes. Except the lingua. He never liked it. He always thought it was tough and he could never forget where it came from. He ate it anyhow 'cause his sisters liked it and so did his ma and it was all there was. He chewed every thick clotty bite and tried not to barf and even worse was when she served it cold in the summertime, but he chewed through it anyhow and ignored what was in his mouth and where it came from and how it almost felt like it was wriggling, and--

Nick falls. Feet on the ground. The tongue slides and falls off him like a wet coat. Flops at his feet. He shuts his eyes. Spits. 

Something thick flies outta his mouth. 

Spits.

Taste of pennies and something else.

He bit his own tongue. That's how come he tastes blood. He bit his own tongue. He bit his own tongue. He didn't--

The body of some Infected redneck slams him back against the wall and he goes for his holsters. Out comes the pistol and he whips the butt against a temple. Explosion of heat. Down it goes and more to come.

He fires and runs and fires, too bullshit to wonder how his pistols finally came back to him, too bullshit to wonder how he always has just enough ammo. He runs and fires and houses spin past like they're on the way to Oz. Then he hears a growl above the din of gunfire and rain and he twists and it's on him. 

His pistols fly outta his grip. 

The nightmare face looms above as the Hunter flares its claws and here it comes.

The claws sink in and he screams so loud it sounds like a shotgun blast. Twist and gouge and it rams its filthy fists into his guts and it tries to grab a fistful of intestine. Nick shrieks for help, for death, for fucking anything to stop this, his weak hands push useless against the Hunter and the rain.

He takes in one last breath and he hears it. 

That was. 

That was.

The Hunter's back blows up in a torrent of gore. 

Another beautiful roar of a shotgun and the thing's head vanishes and it falls over on top of him like it just had the orgasm of a lifetime and then went right the fuck to sleep.

A shape over him in the darkness. He knows that outline. The set of the shoulders and the thickness of the waist, that shiny bald head. 

"Jesus God," Coach says, drops the shotgun, falls to his knees. The weight of the Hunter vanishes, thuds to his left. Warm living hands touch over his wounds. Still no pain.

"Is that him?" Rochelle, suddenly looming over Coach. "Oh. Shit."

Coach leans down, presses his mouth near Nick's ear. "You gotta talk to me, son. Tell me you alive."

"Naw suh," Nick whispers. "I'm dead. Been dead for a while now. Nice t'see yaz."

Coach hikes back up.

Hot hands cup the sides of Nick's face. A familiar profile enters his field of vision, someone kneeling near his head. The brim of that stupid fucking hat blocks some of the rain from reaching his face. "... Lord, you look a mess."

"... fuck off, Ellis."

"He ain't right," Coach says. He feels gloved hands under his body, one worming under his hip, the other under his shoulder. "We gotta get this broke motherfucker back to the safe house. Y'all gotta shoot for four. I'mma carry him."

***

He won't close his eyes.

The rain ransacks the outside world. In here it's almost quiet. Coach carried him like a firefighter toting a smoke-sick person outta a burning building. They stripped him outta his drenched clothes, he was too tired to care what anybody thought of his naked body, too tired to fight. He let Ellis dry his hair with a thin towel and let Coach suture the worst of his wounds shut and he let Rochelle force pills in his mouth and he let them take turns at feeding him and keeping him upright so's he won't choke.

Now his clothes hang pinned up on the far wall and Coach lies sleeping right near his feet and Rochelle dozes a couple feet to his left. Ellis clings to his right side like he's terrified Nick will die if he lets go. His face is cold against the crook of Nick's neck, and he can tell by how Ellis breathes that he's not sleeping, either. 

He won't close his eyes. He won't risk waking up somewhere other than here. If he dies, he'll die awake and surrounded by people who give a shit about him. Not alone. Not again. He can't do that again. He can't.

"It's okay," says Ellis, like he's reading Nick's thoughts. "It's okay. You ain't going nowhere. You could sleep."

"... no."

"You can't heal 'less you sleep, dumbass. Come on. I ain't sleeping no more. I've got you."

"No."

"Please?"

"How the hell did you assholes even find me?"

"... we thought you was dead. So we didn't at first. Found a safe house. Regrouped. Dried off. We, uh, we couldn't just... We reckoned if you was dead, we'd see you buried. You been with us since Savannah and it'd be wrong to just leave you out there. And if you was Infected, we reckoned we'd put two in your head. Thought you'd want it that way."

He shifts. Ellis is a comforting coolness beside him. "So how the hell did yaz find me?"

"Wasn't hard. Just took forever. We didn't find you in the cane, so Ro said you must be walking. So we kept on 'til we heard you screaming blue murder."

"... I'm not sleeping."

"Oh, come on, now."

"I'm. Not. I... I musta died more times than I can count tonight. I don't wanna do it again. I don't wanna close my eyes and wake up in some fucking tiny room and it's always the same damn night outside. I..."

Ellis shifts. His hand feathers over Nick's face, settles on his bare chest. Not once has Ellis shied away from all the scars and pits on his pecs. His finger dips into the hole right above Nick's nipple and twirls, tests the smoothness of glassy skin. "Don't talk like that. That shit's impossible. We was wrong, that's all. You was just in shock."

"Bullshit." No feeling to the word. He's dry and naked and for once he feels not in the least self-conscious about it. His... his friends are all here. They didn't leave him to die. They came for him and pulled his ass outta the fryer. They're all around him and they'll protect him. They have great big guns and hard walls and food. And he can finally feel again, Ellis's body cool and lovely against him, the burning itch of his guts finally consenting to mend. 

He feels right for the first time since he got outta the sleeping bag this morning.

"Hey."

"Mm."

"I'm so glad you're here." Ellis sounds like he may cry. 

Nick rolls his eyes. "So aren't I?"

"Hell's horses!" Rochelle, muzzy and tired. "Go the fuck to sleep!"

Nick opens his mouth to argue and his head splits into a yawn. Ellis sets a hand on his head. Strokes through his thick dark hair. Can't fight it. Sighs. 

Nick closes his eyes and trusts they'll all be here when he opens them again.

**Author's Note:**

> So there's this gameplay mechanic where characters who die over the course of a level simply... appear in the safe room at the start of the next level? And everything is okay now? I started ruminating on this basic concept years ago (character endlessly respawning until they spawn close to the rest of the group, character almost but not quite spots the fourth wall in the meanwhile). I finally wrote it because I'm fucking around and not finishing the last couple chapters of the main storyline. Now I'm out of excuses. Hopefully it'll be done in the next couple of weeks. -Nick


End file.
